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Table of contents
  1. Mimicry
    1. What Mimicry can help with
    2. What Mimicry can’t help with
    3. Getting a clip to mimic
    4. Mimicry 101
    5. Benefits of mimicry

Mimicry

Some parts of the voice are so small and hard to consciously modify that mimicry is the only way we know of. Mimicry is a good way to learn new microbehaviours, speech patterns and can also eventually modify your voiceprint. It breaks down the barrier of the subconscious wanting to keep the voice confined to what it’s used to and allows for new tweaks to happen.

What Mimicry can help with

  • microbehaviours / unconscious speech aspects
  • speech patterns
    • intonation
    • sibilants
    • tempo fluctuation
  • consistency

What Mimicry can’t help with

This is assuming we’re not going to spend years doing it, since it is technically possible to learn these somewhat through mimicry at an extremely slow rate unless we’ve been predisposed to learning them already.

  • vocal weight
  • pitch range
  • resonance
  • clarity

Getting a clip to mimic

  • identify an aspect of voice you want to change or a voice you want to have
  • find an example of that voice quality that is at a similar pitch and not too far out of your resonance range
  • make sure it’s not too fast, or it will be harder to mimic
  • get a 2-5 second clip, just a short phrase of about 5-10 words, cut it from the clip and add a beep at the beginning

Mimicry 101

  • the reason mimicry works is that it lets your subconscious figure stuff out intuitively so don’t overanalyse
  • try to copy all speech patterns - intonation, tempo, resonance drops, volume
  • get into the character, expect their voice to come out of your mouth and believe it 100%, don’t just hope, believe.
  • play the voice in your head before and during your attempt
  • do a combination of two methods:
    • dub over the clip as it’s playing in real time
    • listen to a clip, and while listening mouth the words but don’t speak, then once it’s finished try to do your best impression

Benefits of mimicry

  • helps you learn speech patterns
  • if you find your self perception is negative, it can help you get a voice that sounds ‘less like you’ and overcome self bias
  • helps learn microbehaviours and other unconscious aspects of voice that are difficult to change normally